Originally Posted by
mariol
I'm fairly confident that I'm gaining value by shifting about 20k of non-United spend to my Quest card for the PQP I need to make 1k. That's spend that would have earned an extra 10k Chase UR points (Freedom Unlimited 1.5x). I get more value out of miles (IN to Oz for my family for 100k), so I always transfer. Accordingly, 1k status is worth far more than 10k miles for me (3 RT Pluspoint upgrades to Sydney are probably worth in the region of $25,000), so I would argue that you can't really judge whether someone is spending efficiently without knowing their circumstances.
Yup. Years ago, I was counting on those 5k EQM from my Chase UA card to make it over the 1K threshold, several years just barely. That required $20k (or was it $25k?) spend that would have maybe earned me 20k extra miles/points on a different card. Of course, it wasn’t the only way I could have gotten those extra EQM: I could have also taken a precious weekend and flown to the other coast and back. So effectively I traded
not having to do a transcon MR for 20k miles. Basically I paid 20k miles for a trip I didn’t have to take! That seemed so worth it to me (I say that fully aware that I am probably violating some FT rule
)